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Topic: [KSM] To Switch a Pirate (Read 13753 times)

As soon as Zuron saw the bright azure streak, he quickly slid down the roof and into the back alleys below.

A high intensity LASER?, Zuron thought, using his gravitationally attractive feet to maneuver through the tight paths in an effort to flank the fugitive, as well as bypass the snipers. There was no telling just how many of the things the pirate had at his disposal. He knew all too well that he'd be at a disadvantage from an attack with practically instant velocity. His best bet was to take them on close. However, he was also quite aware that he couldn't get too close or suffer getting mobbed by the numerically superior pirates.

"Flanking.", Zuron reported as he continued his approach.

Nearing his intended position, he draws and loads his canister launcher and prepares to reengage the enemy.

The sounds of fighting caused by Dantares' men had died down completely as Suul ran off. His HUD registered on his visor that the dropship was circling overhead, "Men wounded, lost?" The reply came back quickly, "Lost a small few. The rest's armor is damaged in various amounts. We extracted the dead like you said to." Dantares nodded, he didn't want anyone left behind that might signal their involvement. Even if they did find part of a Daeluush, the Daeluush were known to be a greatly fragmented people. He quietly hoped anyone who knew about Suul would proceed to quickly seal their mouths shut once word got out of this attack.

He slung the rifle over his back and took off again across the rooftops. Dantares didn't care that the would-be snipers took shots at him, he relied on his speed, agility, small size, armor, and computer to protect him. And the occasional pistol round to anyone on the roof in front of him. As he ran, he contacted the Trojan frigate again, "Fire a round in front of them, where they can see. Show them just how serious we are. But make damn sure it's not close enough to harm them!" The controller in charge rogered to the technicians who confirmed the round would soon be on target, a good distance in front of Suul's group, the controller made sure of that, but possibly close enough that the shockwave might knock them off their feet.

The round came screaming through the atmosphere at at least hypersonic speeds, tearing a hole through the air, a tail of fire following the metal rod. It quickly made impact with the ground, blowing apart the buildings around it, causing a minor earthquake, and kicking up a great plume of dirt and debris. However, it lacked the shape of the ever-feared mushroom cloud that the Daeluush had sworn never to create again. Doubtless, many would have died in the blast if it'd landed in a residential area. Dantares sighed and hoped it had been nothing but warehouses blown apart.

"Zuron, do your best to slow them down. I will be there shortly." He lunged up a few stairs to another roof after crashing through a window and disabling a few more aggressive spectators, and then jumped over the side. The dropship was waiting as he landed atop it, and swung down into its hold. They took off towards Suul's men, low and fast, hoping to drop Dantares and the other Daeluush off in front of them, surrounding the roofs of the buildings that created the alleyways they attempted to escape through.

The orbital shot slammed into the city several blocks ahead of Suul's group, yet the blast was enough to knock some of the smaller creatures off of their feet. This wasn't the case with Ugal, who kept moving forward with Suul slung over his shoulder.

"These guys came prepared!" Suul screamed over the ringing of his ears. Meanwhile, he was busy searching through a satchel that Ugal had on his person, looking for something to help ease the pain. Lucky for him, Ugal had a painkiller addiction that he hadn't shaken off. Suul grabbed a small needle, ripped off the protective covering, and jabbed it into his injured leg after squirming around on the Monan's shoulder. A small dose of relief washed over him, although there was still a dull throbbing. Anything that was bright instantly became that much brighter, while the dark spots in his vision turned completely black. A grin floated across Suul's face, but he quickly forgot about it as he gazed at everything behind him.

"Someone get on the comm and alert the Raptor of our situation. See if they can't help us," Suul yelled out after he regained some of his focus.

At the first sign of commotion on planet, Suul had alerted his corvette, known as Raptor, that something was going on planetside. This had thrown the crew into action, preparing them for a 'hot jump' which was the scenario of a quick exit from the system. They had drilled this a couple of times, and ever since the attack on the Source ship, Suul had instilled in his men the importance of always being prepared.

It turned out that this was one of those times. Since Raptor had been alerted, the crew had quickly manned their stations and the ship's weapons were brought online. It had been floating on the opposite side of the planet, keeping a low profile. Suul's two frigates were out in deeper space, since Suul didn't want to attract any attention if he didn't have to. That plan had failed utterly. Now it was just a matter of actually getting to those frigates to take out the Source ship that had been sent after him.

Raptor crested the horizon of the planet, bringing it within view of Trojan and subsequently, within firing range. The corvette was traveling at tremendous speeds, one of the few benefits of having a ship so small. It's lone mass driver had been charged to full capacity for some time, and had been aching to unleash the large round of condensed metal.

And that's exactly what it did when it came within view. The slug ripped across space, covering the distance between the two ships in a manner of seconds. The round slammed into Trojan, while several of the smaller guns aboard Raptor fired off scrambling mechanisms. Raptor could not hope to win a one-on-one fight against the larger Source frigate, and had to rely on a hit-and-run tactic until Suul was able to get off of the planet. It would be a short amount of time before either of the ships could recharge their guns, which worked in favor of the pirates, giving Suul a small window in which to get to his shuttle.

Dantares' HUD and the technicians aboard the Trojan frigate notified him of what was going on, giving the simple order to the frigate, "Fire missiles if the guns won't recharge fast enough, and turn the others off, focus the energy on just one. All we need is one shot to neutralize that corvette. Clip its wings." He surveyed the city from above. A fair bit of damage had been done, but nothing incredibly harsh. The denizens will speak of the unusual and swift battle, likely making up stories, but the only ones who might connect the dots were those close to Suul, and the words of pirates and brigands were hardly trustworthy, considered Dantares. He smiled to himself at the irony.

"Prepare to evacuate," he said over the comms, "Anyone not already on the dropship will be picked up. Krag and Zuron, that means you. Find Taca's body as well, I'll give the pilot the last known coordinates of the flyer. I'd rather not upset these flock lords or whatever they're called by leaving one of their own behind. Then come back for me." The dropship passed over Suul's group, and Dantares casually stepped off the lowered door, falling with the crack of pavement as he landed. He reached for no weapons, his suit magnifying his calm word, "Suul."

Krag got a GPS lock on Dantares."Aagh. He's facing down Suul alone." He moved his arm pretty far. Not exactly 100% but it was operating decently. "I don't know about you, but I don't fancy the thought of having him get shot to pieces by whatever else this pirate has up his sleeve... I think I'll go after him. Screw orders, if there's one thing I know about the military it's that the officers are just as capable of screwing up as the grunts are. You might want to board the shuttle, if you're thinking about helping too, Zuron. No need for both our asses to get chewed out, metaphorically speaking." He said, breaking off in a sprint towards Dantares' and Suul's location.

Suul's group halted in their tracks as the armored creature fell from the sky. They would have shot him on impact, but the sheer surprise of the move, and the simple fact that he wasn't reaching for a weapon caused them to halt. When the creature called for Suul by name, it confirmed their suspicion that this person was here to talk rather than fight, even if the past few minutes didn't seem to point in that direction.

"Huh?" Suul said, turning himself around on Ugal's shoulder to see what had happened. The scene would have been comical with Suul slung over the shoulder, his ass facing in the direction of Dantares. It was quite an odd first introduction, although no one would think of it that way. Suul tapped Ugal on the back, motioning for him to set Suul down, which he did.

It was odd, not having two legs to stand on, and Suul had to stand with his arm resting on the Monan for balance. His left leg was still throbbing although the pain medication helped. Suul took a moment, and rubbed his head with his free hand as the blood rushed from his head and left him momentarily dizzy.

"Whaddya want?" he finally managed to say, after a short moment. "This all seems a bit extreme, doesn't it? Just for one man? Never knew I was so important..."

Suul was cut off as what looked like a large machine burst onto the scene, taking up a position next to Dantares. The pirates continued to train their weapons on the two intruders, waiting for a reply.

Dantares pointed at Krag, "I told you to get on that dropship, Krin. Your being here is enough for me to blow your head off. I'll not have any more insubordination, Taca should've taught you that lesson." His voice calmed considerably, "Pirate to pirate, Suul," he took his helmet off, it disconnecting for a few seconds before finally letting go, "I'm going to let you off this planet. Partially because I like a good chase, and partially because I've already done enough damage to this rock. I'd prefer you surrender now to save your men, but I doubt you will. In the end, it matters not, I will catch you Suul, make no mistake." The face of the Kingslayer observed Suul's crew before returning its gaze to Suul, "Get on that damn dropship Krin, our words are not for your sensors. You'll have your fight later."

Above, the Trojan class frigate opened it missile bays above and below the gun bays, and let loose six missiles that screamed across space and zigzagged and moved almost randomly, controlled by computers. When they began to get halfway to the Raptor, they broke apart into six more missiles. Thirty-two missiles now descended on the corvette in a fairly wide circle, and at odd angles, from every direction but towards and away from the Trojan frigate. The concentrated energy lit up the gun, as it waited for the missiles to pin the corvette, waiting for the right moment to unleash its rod.

What on Furen?!, summed up Zuron's thoughts after hearing what happened through the comms. Shrugging it off, he landed beside Taca, or at least the largest portion that remained of the late flock lord. A sudden thud fell on Zuron's back, Taca's dead weight piling onto his back. "So much for weapons hold...", he sighed, his face giving off an air of exasperation. Zuron began recovering the rest of the agent's body, his only relief being the lack of curious minds rearing their problematic heads at the unpleasant landscape sculpted by the Machy's recent commotion. He knew that that reprieve was never going to last, however, so he had to move quick.

Grabbing hold of the last piece of incriminating evidence, he dashed towards the rendezvous point and regrouped back at the dropship.

"Recovery complete, heading there now.", Zuron called in, putting down the body.

"How very considerate of you," Suul said, waving his left arm through the air in an attempt to feign appreciation. It didn't fool anyone. "You know, no one has ever shown me such kindness before..." Here Suul trailed off for a moment and turned his head skyward, as if he were deep in thought. "When I was a child-" Suul tried to continue, but Ugal cleared his throat rather loudly and brought Suul back to his senses. "Sorry about that, yes, thank you Ugal." The Monan merely nodded his head.

"Anyway, I will tell you this, Daeluush," for Suul had recognized Dantares' race after he removed his helmet, "I have been caught before. In fact, I've been in prison before. It's actually quite an interesting-"

"Sir," Ugal said, cutting Suul off yet again. He knew when his boss was about to ramble and knew this wasn't the time, place, or even the correct person to ramble to.

"Yes, anyway," Suul said, glaring at Ugal, "I do believe we have both over stayed our welcome here." With that, Suul patted Ugal on the back. This triggered a series of events that followed roughly in this order:

First: Ugal fired off a phosphorous smoke grenade from the grenade launcher attached to his assault rifle. The projectile arced towards Dantares and Krag. The path could barely be called a parabola, given the short distance it had to travel, but due to its heavy weight, gravity did manage to act on it somewhat. However, this was almost completely irrelevant, for even though Ugal was holding his weapon with one arm, his aim was true.

The grenade impacted directly into Dantares' armored midsection, knocking him on his ass. The shot was far from fatal, however. The grenade threw phosphorous all over the place, illuminating everything in a pale and eerie light, which, when coupled with the smoke the grenade started to spew, immediately blocked the two Source agents from seeing anything.

Second: After firing the shot, Ugal stooped to pick Suul up, and the entire group began to haul ass to their shuttle.

Third: The phosphorous began to catch fire after mixing with the outside air, forcing the Source agents to cover their own ass before they could even consider pursuing the pirates.

Fourth: Around this time, far up in the atmosphere were the Raptor and the Trojan. A large number of missiles were converging on the Raptor. Fortunately, the scrambling mechanisms did their job, and they did it well. They had been expensive pieces of hardware, and many of Suul's crew had wondered why their captain had wasted money on such things. Because of their high value, Suul had stressed the order that they were only to be used in extreme situations. This happened to be one of those situations.

A majority of the missiles either exploded harmlessly away from the ship, or fizzled out and floated away into space. The few that managed to break thorugh the scrambling devices were easily mopped up by the Raptor's point defense systems and autocannons.

Navor, who was watching everything from the bridge of the Trojan, muttered under his breath.

"What an ass..."

Roughly a minute after these events, Suul and his crew were in a shuttle that was hurtling towards the Raptor.

Dantares quietly got up, but was inwardly seething with rage, I attempted to talk to that son of a bitch! The damn over-reacting fool! He should've listened to my words. He looked to Krag, "Let's just get on the damn dropship." He put his helmet back on as it came to hover over them, Dantares running up to a roof and jumping onto it. As his HUD came back online, he looked up at the reports that flitted across his screen and across the sky, I could call the rest of the fleet in, and finish this. Right here, right now. I may yet have a chance to talk though... He calmly watched the situation unfold, not surprised Suul had come prepared.

In space, the missiles had never been intended to hit the Raptor, merely to distract it, to keep the enemy corvette as steady as possible. The Trojan frigate fired its one charged rifle at the Raptor as the missiles came close and exploded. It began to recharge the broadside closest to the Raptor, while three more rifles extended into space on its other broadside, already fully charged by the separate batteries that connected to them, yet hidden from the gaze of the Raptor, as the Trojan vessel kept its one flank towards the corvette.

The Raptor was moving at quite a clip, but the shuttle managed to match it's velocity and began to maneuver into the small docking bay, that was just barely large enough for the transport to enter. Suul was strapped into his seat as one of his crew members was wrapping up his leg to stop the bleeding. It wasn't the greatest job, and Suul was actually becoming a little bit dizzy from the combined forces of losing blood and the painkillers he had taken.

He was staring out the window, gazing at the Raptor when the slug from the Trojan made contact. It was a glancing blow the scraped through the outer armor of the Raptor and managed to alter it's course a bit. There wasn't any serious structural damage, which Suul could tell immediately. The sense of danger cut through the druggy haze and the loss of blood.

"Get us on the ship!" he yelled at the pilots, who went pressed the engines for more power as they adjusted their course to get into the docking bay.

As soon as the shuttle was locked in, the Raptor went to full power, diverting everything it had into it's engines. Suul's crew now had to haul their captain off the shuttle, as he had finally blacked out due to the blood loss. They too had to deal with almost pitch black corridors as all of the lights on the ship went out to fully charge their engines. It didn't matter much, though, as they all knew the layout of the Raptor by heart, and were able to navigate it blindfolded, if they had to.

Just as they were connecting Suul to a mobile gurney, the Raptor jumped out of orbit and deeper into the system, just outside one of the many asteroid belts.

The dropship picked up everyone else and scurried back to the frigate. Dantares strode off the dropship as what was left of Taca was placed in a box, fists clenched. He beckoned the team to follow and led them to the bridge, where a technician reported, "They jumped to an asteroid field, sir. Shall we chase them?" Dantares nodded and ordered, "Yes, at full speed." He sat in his chair, knowing full well they were walking into a trap, and that an asteroid field could easily tip the odds towards any defender, as Dantares had done years ago. His fingers thrummed on arms of the captain's chair, as he considered the situation mentally. Finally, he gave another order, "Tell the Superconductor and her escorts to move towards the other side of the field." The technician replied, "Yes, sir," as Dantares looked at the team.

He said to them, "Certain knowledge has been withheld from you. Chief among this knowledge is that we have not been alone. The Source battlecruiser Superconductor has been following us, along with two more frigate escorts similar to this one. Currently we are walking directly into a trap, against an enemy who believes we are the only hunters. If they fight, they will be taken in the rear by Superconductor's escorts. If they flee, they will flee right into Superconductor itself. I intend to have those escorts combine with our own ship, and drive them through the asteroid field, right into the stealth battlecruiser, a hammer against an anvil. We will disable Suul's ship, board it, kill his crew and anyone standing in our way, and capture Suul. I want you all to go back to the armory and restock in preparation, then return to the bridge to watch the carnage." Dantares returned his attention to his ship, preparing to wage a battle as attacker instead of defender in an asteroid field.

By the time the Source ships had exited warp, the Raptor was already amidst the asteroid field and had rendezvoused with Suul's two frigates. In fact, Suul had already been transferred to his flagship, the Destruction and was still unconscious. He had been hooked up to a number of machines, and was under the care of the only doctor the pirate group had, who was quite skilled in the area of xenobiology.

Suul's bleeding had been halted, and his body was being pumped full of antiobiotics. If it had been a proper hospital with state of the art machinery, Suul would have had nanobots flowing through his bloodstream, attacking anything that was foreign to a Forthi body. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and Suul's life was not guaranteed.

Ugal, on the other hand, was fine. Adrenaline was still pumping through his body, although that was almost always true. He had stayed by his captain's side through most of the surgery, and had no real idea what was going on outside of the ship. That was true until the Destruction shuddered after being hit by something. Ugal decided that he could no longer stay in the surgery room. He left, just as the doctor began to cauterize Suul's leg to seal up the gaping wound.

Instead of heading towards the bridge of the ship, Ugal made his way to the rear. The Monan was no captain, and would not have been much help there. Besides, he had other things that needed taking care of.

The Source ships seemed to fall on them from out of nowhere, using asteroids as visual shields, while their signals were hidden by their stealth, even harder to discern within the field of rocks. Three Trojan frigates came at them from their front, left, and right, rifles bared. The Raptor was ripped apart almost immediately by the barrage of metal rods. The Source ships spun quickly, bringing their parallel broadsides to bear, unleashing careful rounds in an attempt to disable the frigates.

On board one of the frigates, Dantares took no pleasure from the destruction of the Raptor. Victory was almost assured. The enemy was outgunned, outnumbered, and outmaneuvered on their own defensive field. To fight was to die. To run was to die. Deep down, Dantares wished to face another foe as he had at Kanax. Suul had certainly put up an interesting fight on the ground, but the only thing keeping him alive now was his value. He'd given orders to disable, not destroy, but the Raptor had the unfortunate luck of being small. He quietly hoped Suul had not been fool enough to stay on the ship.

Suul's ships were taking some damage. The disappearance of the Raptor was demoralizing, to say the least, but the pirates still had a few tricks up their sleeves. Although the Source ships had been using the asteroids as effective shields, this turned out to be their downfall. Several years ago, Suul had luckily stumbled upon a cargo ship devoted entirely to explosives. This had seemed like the perfect cargo to steal, until they realized that they had no real use for it. Their weapons required specific ammunitions, and the explosives were designed to be used in mining operations. Since Suul and his crew weren't in that kind of business, and because the market wasn't entirely receptive to explosives from criminal groups, Suul had ordered that the goods be stashed. And that's when he had realized that they served a defensive purpose as well.

Three massive explosions erupted amidst the battlefield. It seemed as if three suns were being born as fire burst forth, consuming the small amounts of air that had been hidden deep within pockets. And just like that, the explosions disappeared, as all of the air disappeared. But the flying debris remained. The first Source ship struck was one of the Trojan frigates. The ship was able to withstand several of the chunks of rock, but one rather large piece struck the smaller ship with such force that it was bent. Something ruptured within the ship itself and it disappeared in its own fireball.

The second Source ship was the Superconductor. Even all of the latest stealth technology couldn't protect the ship from hurtling space debris. The ship was punctured in numerous areas by several small rocks traveling at astounding speeds. Atmosphere within the ship started to vent into the void of space, along with some unlucky crew members. The impacts were so sudden and so powerful that most of the ship was uninhabitable and was reduced to a floating carcass on the battlefield.

The third Source ship was crushed by a massive chunk of asteroid that had failed to separate into smaller pieces of debris. However, it had gained a lot of velocity, and smashed into the Source ship, carrying it away from the battlefield.

The Trojan herself was relatively unharmed, given her position on the battlefield, and the same was true of the Destruction. The other pirate frigate, Guul, didn't fare so well. She had been peppered by smaller rocks, until a rather large chunk with a craggy edge cut came along and cut her in two. Crew members that had been working in the middle of the ship were surprised to be suddenly sucked into space and the void.